How does a "girl in a red bikini" live today, who escaped from the USSR by swimming more than 40 years ago

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At one time, the escape of Liliana Baronetskaya (surname at birth) from the Soviet Union made a lot of noise in the Western press. An 18-year-old graduate of the Odessa vocational school, who served as a waitress on a cruise ship in the port of Sydney, got out through the cabin window in only one red bikini, swam across the Sydney Bay and was able to obtain refugee status in Australia. How was the further fate of the desperate fugitive, whom the world recognized as Liliana Gasinskaya?

Daring escape

After her escape, Liliana will talk about how she dreamed of fleeing the Soviet Union from the age of 14, not wanting to endure endless queues and constant dullness. She dreamed of a career as an actress and model, but entered a banal vocational school only to get the opportunity to work on a cruise ship.

After graduating from college, she became a waitress on the cruise ship Leonid Sobinov, which stopped in Sydney in January 1979. Liliana's choice fell on Australia for a reason. According to her, one day she saw a stunning Australian beach in a picture in a beautiful magazine and immediately decided that this is the best place on the planet, and she will certainly live there.

Before setting foot on the coast of Sydney Bay, the girl twice tried to leave the liner, first off the coast of Fremantle, then - at a stop in Melbourne, but both times she was disturbed. Only in the port of Sydney, she was able to leave the ship through the window and swim to the shore in one swimsuit. She swam for almost 40 minutes, completely oblivious to the fact that there are sharks in the bay. She was driven by fear, because Liliana knew exactly what her desire for a beautiful life could result in if she was discovered before she reached her goal and could ask for help. She mentally counted the meters covered and thought only that there would be no more canned meat and queues in her life, only cocktails, the beach and freedom.

Full of desperate determination, Liliana made her way to the shore and immediately turned to a passer-by with a dog for help. In imperfect English, she was able to explain to the stranger where she came from and why she needed his participation. The Daily Mirror journalists immediately took the girl under their care, managing to hide the fugitive before representatives of the Soviet consulate reached her.

Australian dream

The first refuge of the fugitive was the home of the Daily Mirror photographer Graham Fletcher. The photographer himself, shortly after the appearance of a beauty from the USSR in Sydney, left his wife and three children for her. This brave and desperate girl was very different from all those women whom Fletcher knew before. She completely won his heart, and the photographer began to take an active part in the fate of the fugitive.

However, the sympathy of many people was on Liliana's side. She easily obtained refugee status just a couple of days after her arrival on the shore. And this despite the fact that Australia rarely provided shelter, even to victims of military conflicts, and before Liliana usually deported fugitives from cruise ships. But the image of a girl in a red swimsuit was too attractive to refuse to use it.

And Liliana actually tried her best: she never refused to shoot in a bikini, generously gave interviews and for some time was a real star, every glossy magazine tried to get photos of a “girl in a red bikini”. In Australia, the girl really entered a model school, later took up dancing, took part in a TV show, worked as a DJ and even once appeared on screens as an actress. But there was clearly not enough money for the kind of life she once dreamed of. But for a very frank shooting for the Penthouse edition, Liliana received a very decent fee of 15 thousand dollars.

In 1984, Liliana Gasinskaya married Australian businessman Ian Hyson. The "Girl in the Red Bikini" disappeared, and was replaced by a respectable wife and mother. However, the marriage with Hyson lasted only six years, after which Liliana and her children left the coveted Australia and settled in the UK, where she lives today.

Today Liliana Gasinskaya is 60 years old, she leads a rather closed lifestyle and avoids publicity in every possible way. Foreign media wrote that she is a mother of many children and does not want to remember her turbulent past. Be that as it may, she achieved her goal and became a part of the Western world, which from childhood seemed to her much more attractive than Soviet reality.

The Soviet citizen actually did not have the opportunity to legally leave his homeland. One of the options was to marry a foreigner, and the family path was ordered to the person, since emigration was limited as much as possible. Therefore, those wishing to leave the USSR had to resort to extreme measures and think over whole schemes of illegal ways to part with their homeland. History has recorded the most desperate fugitives who hijacked planes for the sake of abroad, poisoned themselves with a high dose of medicines and threw themselves from liners into the open ocean.